Conventional wisdom long has held that the further out from travel an airline ticket is booked, the better the fare will be, and a recent Business Travel News survey shows that advance-purchase policies are still the standard for nearly three-quarters of corporate travel programs.
But airlines’ increasingly sophisticated yield-management strategies are causing a shift in last-minute pricing, Bob Brindley, vice president and principal at BCD Travel’s Advito consultancy, explained in a recent BTN article about the survey.
Relatively cheap last-minute fares on long-haul flights are sometimes available now that airlines have begun opening up lower-cost inventory when bookings fall below expectations, Brindley said. But there’s a catch: Airlines also are increasing change fees for bargain-shopping fliers.
“In the past, the relationship between price and advance purchase was a relatively smooth curve,” Brindley told BTN. “However, today it does fluctuate, even though it follows the same overall trend.”
